Online Advertising for Beginners

Search Engines

The biggest and most used search engines are Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask.com. About 70% of people use Google, 16% use yahoo, 9% use Bing and 2% use Ask.com (November 2009 statistics). The most widely used search engine and source for finding any type of company or service is Google. Google lists companies a couple of ways when people do a search. There are organic search results, pay-per-clicks (also known as sponsored searches), map search results, articles and more.

Organic Searches

Organic Searches are the searches you see on the left hand side of Google. These searches are free. Companies do not pay any fee to Google to show up here. However, it is very tricky on how Google lists the companies in order. Google has spiders, which are programs in a sense, that go through the internet, surf all the websites and read the texts that are on the websites. These spiders classify web pages according to their text. If a particular websites text is related to the keyword "jumper rental", than Google classifies it as a webpage people would want to see when searching for "jumper rental". The priority of the list for a specific keyword always changes because people are always writing articles and optimizing their website, so one month a company might be first on the list for a keyword, but 3 months later they might be the 10th company showing up for that same keyword. Search engine optimization is a way to help make a website more relevant to specific keywords. Organic Searches are the most used search results from all the sources because they are the most relevant to what the person is looking for.

Pay Per Click

Pay-per-clicks are the sponsored search results you see on the right side of the results page when you use search engines. Companies pay money to be listed here for their desired keywords. Companies pay every time someone clicks on the advertisement banner. Usually companies see a lot of results from advertising in pay-per-clicks because they pay usually around 0.20 to 0.80 cents per click (depending on how competitive the keyword bidding is). However, keeping track of the keyword performance and optimizing the ads takes up a lot of time and requires the person doing it to have knowledge in pay per click advertising. Usually most people hire a company that does pay-per-click optimization and pay them on a monthly basis to keep track of their keywords and optimize their ads. The cost of doing pay per click depends on how much money you decide to spend on it, but usually it runs in the hundreds of dollars a month. Companies can place a daily or monthly budget so it only spends that much, once the limit is reached the advertisements stop. They say about 10-30% of clicks on the advertisements are fraud, meaning a competitor is sitting their clicking on the advertisements so the company can get charged. Google's pay-per-click program is called Google Adwords. Pay-per-click is usually more expensive on the long run than search engine optimization.

Search Engine Optimization

Search engine optimization is when someone optimizes their website so Google's spiders will recognize it as important for a specific keyword. This can be done by creating back links (links from other websites/webpage's to your website), articles linking to your website, directory submissions and more. Search engine optimization is kind of like a popularity game. The more websites there are that refer or link back to your website for a specific keyword, for instance "jumper rentals", than Google's spiders think, ok this website is the most important for the keyword "jumper rentals" and therefore, should be the first listed under the organic search results. Companies that usually get listed on the top of search results for a keyword do search engine optimization on a continuous basis. This means they either hire someone or do it themselves. Hiring someone costs around $350-$600 per month to continuously do search engine optimization, but this does not guarantee a company will the listed in the first page.

Online Directories

Online directories differ from search engines in the way that they are more specific to a particular topic. There are probably hundreds of thousands of directories out there, each one for its specific topic or subject. Directories, like party directories, are more helpful to customers looking to find a company or service in a specific location. For instance, someone looking to find a jumper rental company might do a search in a search engine for "jumpers in Glendale", but might come across companies that are located out in Glendale California or Glendale Arizona. Directories, however, usually list companies servicing specific locations and for specific services. Therefore, finding a company or service in your local area through a online directory is easier and usually more informative than using a search engine.

Costs

The cost to be advertised in a directory is usually either free or too expensive. The most widely known directories for party rentals are Yellowpages.com, which is usually too expensive, and also PartyPop, which takes too may steps and is too confusing to find what you're looking for. Party Jump USA is a unique directory because it offers companies advertisements in all of the major online search sources like Yellowpages.com, Google, and Yahoo, but they do so through exclusive advertisings, which in essence gives the company advertising all the customers looking for the directories' specific service in the area their advertising. Party Jump USA's directory does not create competition between companies advertising, so they get the most efficient form of advertising, a competitive advantage over their competition.